I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of manual excavation and, more particularly, to a relatively inexpensive lightweight and portable system for expediting the excavating of a military fighting position or foxhole.
For many years, military people have been looking at ways to significantly reduce the time it takes a soldier to establish a two-man fighting position and thereby improve a soldier's combat effectiveness. The need for infantryman or others to "dig in" to secure a position or reduce exposure to enemy fire, of course, is longstanding. Most of the time spent and energy consumed in creating a two-man fighting position is expended in the "digging" or soil loosening operation. If this significant segment of the fighting position creation operation could be automated or mechanized so that the soldier would only need to throw the dirt out of the hole without having to spend time and energy digging and loosening the dirt, he would gain a decided advantage. To date, that effort has been generally unsuccessful primarily because there has been no approach that meets the necessary criteria and so there remains a need for a lightweight, simple apparatus that is portable and compatible with the soldier's combat load and which works quickly and is able to address a variety of soils under a variety of weather conditions.